Okay. Five quick lessons on Tarot (and divination in general):
1: You shouldn’t do important readings for yourself when you’re beginning. You can
learn to do readings for yourself, depending on the topic, but you have to understand that you have your own built-in biases that are going to mess with your perception. In other psychic methods like Remote Viewing this is called Analytical Overlay, or AOL for short. Basically…you’re likely to see what you want to see, until you get
very good at meditation so you can silence your mind and biases as thoroughly as possible. There’s always some there but you can minimize it a lot.
But getting
very good at meditation is something that takes time, so you need to understand that any readings you do for yourself in the beginning may be off not just because you haven’t learned deeply what all the cards mean yet…but also because your own mind and desires are fogging up your intuition and perception. This is a
big deal and you shouldn’t take it lightly, but being mindful of this risk can help you work to avoid it. Also practice reading for others as much as possible early on.
If you’re dealing with a topic that you’re deeply involved in and emotionally invested in and meditation isn’t helping calm all that down, you should always have another diviner do a reading on that topic for you instead of doing it yourself. That extra layer of detachment offers more clarity than we sometimes wanna admit, but it’s important.
2: Look for a deck that really
feels like it resonates with you. Tarot decks each have their own spirits and powers within and around them. Sometimes a deck just won’t feel right and there are lots of reasons for that…but if you find a deck that feels good to you, a deck that really resonates with you and
likes you itself, then it’s more likely to be accurate with you and even be ruthless with you when your biases are trying to mess up what it’s trying to tell you.
One of my favorite decks is the Wildwood Tarot because it’s pagan as fuck and I vibe with that deeply. I also love the Alchemical Tarot by Robert Place, but it’s heavy in the occult symbolism and it’s okay if you’re not interested in that at the moment (Robert’s books on Tarot are great though, if you wanna study the history and everything). There’s all kinds of decks, and of course the common Raider-Waite deck works just fine for most people too. But its worth it to have a deck you really vibe with and care about beyond basic aesthetic.
If you can find a magic store of some kind local to you, or a bookstore with a big occult section, I recommend going to such a place and physically looking over as many decks as you can. Relax, let go of expectations, and just listen. Odds are, your intuition will pick up on a deck that wants to work with you out of the many options you’ll probably have, and you’ll be able to pick something that holds some meaning to you.
(and yes, you can buy your own tarot decks - if anyone tells you they
must be gifted, just laugh at them)
3: A simple beginner practice that I still do is to draw a card every day. Not even as a “how will my day go” kind of reading, but more of a “what card should I reflect on today” kind of reading. This often plays into how the day goes, I’ve found, but in a deeper and more meaningful way. This helps you get familiar with many of the cards on a deeper layer as you recognize their mysteries play out throughout your day, and also helps you begin to recognize the patterns in your life as you notice which cards come up regularly and what that means for how your life is going.
I also recommend keeping a daily journal of some kind to record what card you got for each day as you do this. That makes it much easier to keep track of things, and look back in retrospect to see the patterns in your life.
4: Tarot is in general a system of patterns. It’s about journeys and progression. The progression of the Major Arcana is called the Fool’s Journey by a lot of folks, and that is a story that you might look up and meditate on. The minor Arcana is a progression too, involving the Royals of the suites, and the journey from the Ace to the 10. In a reading, as well, the context of how each card you’ve laid out relates to each other is as important sometimes as whatever spread you’re using.
The cards are related to each other in various ways…and learning those
patterns is both easier and more valuable than spending hours and hours trying to memorize every card meaning individually. Tarot is about big picture views and cosmic patterns and mysteries. It’s very bad at giving yes/no answers, but very good at showing general directions and probabilities.
Side note: Geomancy is a whole other system of divination that
is very good at giving yes/no answers, but I advise against trying to learn too many things at once. It’s okay to focus on learning Tarot now and then learn Geomancy or other things later. That’s what I did, and I now practice both.
5: As you get better at practicing magic and meditation, there are various other things you can do to enhance your readings. Doing invocations or other ritual work to ask a deity or other spirit to empower your reading, for example, can give you hyper accurate results and help you bypass most of the bias issues I mentioned above (not always completely, depending on how emotional the topic is for you, but proper spiritual intervention almost always helps dramatically). There are all kinds of prayers and spells involved in doing this kind of work, and it really just depends on your interests and what you wanna do magically and in divination. It can be as simple as chanting the Orphic Hymn to Hermès or Apollo, to calling on Planetary Intelligences or Angels according to the topic of your divination (Venus for love questions, etc).
You can also learn to use tarot cards to cast spells, in multiple ways, and that’s a whole other thing for you to work with over time.
There’s lots of stuff to do, but I hope this is a good start.
Most importantly, try to not get overwhelmed.
These things take time. It’s okay to go slow or take breaks.